1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing system for driving an IC chip to carry out predetermined processing, clients, a server, programs and an information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In place of the magnetic-type cash card and the credit card, which have been used in the past, a large number of IC (Integrated Circuit) chips each including a memory used for storing data electrically and a processing circuit for carrying out processing to store the data is used. The IC chip is normally embedded in an IC tag or an IC card and capable of communicating data with other apparatus by radio communication in a non-contact way. Thus, the IC chip is capable of rendering services exhibiting excellent maintainability and corrosion-proof characteristics to the other apparatus without sacrificing the appearance of the IC card.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-141063 discloses a technology of operating such an IC chip (or an IC card) from a client owned by the user through a reader/writer capable of reading out data from the IC card and writing data thereon. Such an IC card can be used as a cash card and a credit card, as well as a prepaid card (or electronic money), an electronic ticket or the like.
In accordance with the technology described above, an access to the IC chip cannot be made directly from the web browser of a client. Instead, a view server is used as a provider of a content and the IC chip communicates with a communication server used as another route. Then, by connecting the view server to the communication server, the IC chip can be operated from the client.
In this technology, all commands relevant to actual processing for operating the IC chip are transmitted from the communication server. Thus, the client intervenes in the processing of the IC chip by merely relaying a command transmitted from the communication server.